The U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 18 in United States v. Skrmetti that Tennessee’s ban on gender mutilation for minors is constitutional. In 2023, Tennessee adopted SB1, a law prohibiting gender surgery and use of puberty blockers/hormones on “gender dysphoric” minors. The usual suspects sought to block the law, and the Biden Administration stood with them. When President Trump came to power in January, the U.S. Government officially switched to support Tennessee.

A cursory survey of social media will reveal the (almost all Democratic) outpouring of rejection of the decision, calling it “cruel” and “discriminatory.” It’s very clear the blue party wants to make gender mutilation of minors another hill to die on. If that’s the case, I’m not calling 911. The fact, however, that there’s such an organized campaign should concern us. When I worked in the Senate, it seemed to me that the Democratic Caucus was something like a well-rehearsed choir. They’d go to the floor with something like “Senator Schumer: We need to protect abortion rights because women die by getting pregnant. Don’t you agree, Senator Klobuchar? Well, yes, Chuck. Patty Murray and I were just talking about our experiences as parents and were so sad that our daughters don’t have the right to kill their babies like we did. Isn’t that right, Senator Murray? Oh, of course. Let’s not forget how discriminatory it is, right Senator Hirono? Yes, of course, Patty—Asian and Pacific Islander women all mourn the demise of Roe. Just the other day, I was asking my good friend from California, Senator Padilla, how much Latina women must be suffering after Dobbs…” Etc., etc. Next to them, the Republican Caucus acted more like the title of former GOP Senator Trent Lott’s book: Herding Cats (complete with feline harmony).

So, Democrats are better at messaging. So what? Do you think Americans are going to buy the message that their daughters should be able to have their breasts amputated? No. But that’s not the problem. The problem is the debasement of political discussion from rational debate to emotive feelings. Yet, according to the New York Times, liberal lesbian Vermont Congresswoman Becca Balint thinks Republicans are winning that messaging battle. Maybe because the Democratic “message” is so risible?

Back in high school, I used to read Congressional Digest magazine at the library. Its format was to take a controversial topic, e.g., “Have recent presidents made proper use of their pardon power?” and assemble senators and congressmen (usually three each) on both sides of the question who then rationally explained their views. They sometimes quoted their opponents, attempting to rebut them, but the idea was to give people an informed overview of the main lines of the argument, pro and con, sometimes recognizing that demarcation was not neat. I was most impressed by the quote from Seneca that always appeared on the title page: “He who decides a case without considering both sides, though he decide justly, cannot be considered just.”

Once upon a time, political discourse was driven by argument. Now it’s often driven by emotions, an attempt to “shape the narrative” by appealing to feelings. That’s why the discussion of Skrmetti will not be driven by facts or descriptions of what’s involved or even back-and-forth repartee. It will be fueled by buzz words, like “discrimination” (nobody ever thinks “discrimination” is good), “cruel” (ditto), “unfair” (ditto), and so on. Without “gender-affirming care,” kids will commit suicide (nobody likes that). In other words, substance will be deliberately avoided, to stick to the superficial.

We Catholics should not be complicit in such debasement of civil life, especially where kids are concerned. What we are talking about is giving a child drugs not to go through puberty: to arrest normal psychosexual development; to alter hormonal balances in his body; to remove healthy, normal, and functioning breasts; to mutilate normal and functional genitalia so that they become cheap imitations, simulacra of what they are redesigned to be, though non-functional. All this is done at a point in life when a child is just entering physical adulthood (that is, after all, what puberty is supposed to culminate in), but it guarantees that he will never, ever be able to be what he or his parent are, that he will never be a parent and never have a child. At sixteen going on seventeen, or younger!

We cannot allow such important issues to be covered over in a gauze of steered sentiments that obfuscate the truth and consequences of “choices” that are not magically made “good” just because they were choices. And make no mistake about it: this is another extension of the “choice” rhetoric that drove the abortion debate for decades. For some reason, “choice” becomes the unique alchemy of sex: “choosing” to sterilize your kid at 17 is “good” even though “choosing” to kill your kid (probably) isn’t. Nobody has yet explained why choosing something makes it ethically good only when it involves the pelvis.